I Could Go on Singing

by John D. MacDonald

  Lois hurried off. George ordered a bland lunch. Jason asked for more coffee. George said, “How is it with you and Marney, pal?”

  “We’re friends.”

  George eyed him shrewdly. “That’s nice. For a while there she was working a lot of little questions in, about you. But she stopped.”

  “Maybe she got all the answers she needs, George.”

  “Needs for what?”

  “I wouldn’t have the faintest idea.”

  “And what would you have in mind?”

  “To be a friend, George.”

  “Everybody needs friends. Lois needs friends. Jenny needs friends.”

  “I approve of your wholesome philosophy, George.”

  “Lois was awful jumpy yesterday morning. And pale as a ghost.”

  “I’d guess it was a little hangover, wouldn’t you?”

  George studied him for a moment. “Okay. It’s none of my business.”

  “What’s none of your business?”

  “End of conversation. New topic, Jase. Last night was a smash. Rave reviews. So far I can’t find a bad one. Maybe the clipping service will find one, like in the Manchester Guardian or someplace, but it doesn’t seem likely. What it was last night, it was love. Big waves of it rolling out of her into that audience and bouncing on back to her. They asked for all of it and got it, and I thought she wouldn’t move a muscle until noon, but she was out early with the kid.”

  “What do you think of the boy?”

  “I think he’s trouble.”

  “Personally, not professionally, what do you think of him?”

  George shrugged. “Seems like a nice enough kid. Something about a kid talking in that accent, it makes them all sound a little upstage and snotty. Like they were having you on. I believe like Paar does, you shake an Englishman awake in the middle of the night, he’d talk just like anybody.”

  “George, you are provincial.”

  George grinned. “I’m an international hick. Here she comes.”

  Lois slid into her chair. “That dear little old lady doesn’t flutter at all. She gets veddy veddy icy. She said she had had quite enough of this nonsense.”

  “She’s not alone,” George said.

  “She was very convincing. We had better get the boy on that train, George.”

  “I am going to make a special effort.”

  But Jenny did not return to the hotel with Matthew until half-past six. George, Lois, Jason and Ida were gathered in the sitting room of the suite, having a drink, trying to hide the growing tension when they heard Jenny and the boy coming down the corridor, singing some sort of school song.

  They came into the suite, flushed and breathless and happy. The boy stopped singing the moment he saw the others in the room. They were arm in arm. The boy gently disengaged himself and pulled his cap off.

  “We’ve been halfway up the Thames,” Jenny said joyously.

  “Down,” the boy said.

  “And all the way down the Strand.”

  “Up,” the boy said.

  “And we saw St. Paul’s and the Tower Bridge and a gorgeous old clipper ship and the place where they measure time from.”

  “Greenwich Mean Time,” the boy explained politely, and helped Jenny off with her coat.

  “And when I was freezing he was perfectly comfortable because they take cold showers at that school.” She sighed. “I don’t know when I’ve had so much fun.”

  “And you missed the train,” George said.

  “On purpose,” Jenny said blithely.

  Matthew looked worried. “How did Aunty Beth take it, Miss Marney? I should have phoned her up myself, but …”

  “She was upset,” Lois said.

  Ida spoke to Jenny. “You haven’t much time. Shall I order dinner?”

  “We ate,” Jenny said.

  “Twice,” the boy said.

  “You missed a few appointments here and there,” George said sourly.

  She faced him with a look of indignation. “Come off it, Georgie. I was very very good for days and days, and I followed your little schedules to the letter, and we’re booked practically solid, aren’t we, and good reviews?”

  “Okay, okay,” George said. “Come on, kid. We’re going to have to scramble if I’m going to get you onto that train.”

  “Yes sir,” Matthew said.

  “Just a moment!” Jenny said. “Did you forget our surprise, dear?” she said to the boy. She turned to George. “I have persuaded Mr. Donne to be my guest for one more night and one more morning.”

  The boy bit his lip. “But, Jenny, we didn’t actually …”

  “But, darling, we did talk about that exhibit thing at the Science Museum.”

  “The ionic propulsion exhibit,” the boy said dubiously.

  “It would be very educational. Your Aunty Beth would certainly understand about that. And we haven’t had a chance to get you that tape recorder you …”

  “But Father promised to take me to buy one.”

  “I’d love to get one for you, Matthew. Really.”

  “I suppose he might not have a chance, really.…”

  “And that exhibit would be educational, wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh yes, but …”

  “Then it’s settled. Come on, Lois. You call her and if it gets a little rough, you can turn her over to me, and I’ll explain.” They went into Jenny’s bedroom and closed the door.

  The boy looked worried. “I do seem to be taking up so much of her time.”

  “It seems to be what she wants, kid,” George said wearily.

  The boy smiled. “She seems to make rather a habit of getting what she wants.”

  “That’s a good word for it,” Jason said. “A habit.”

  The boy looked at his watch. “I’ve missed the train. We couldn’t possibly make it now, Mr. Kogan.”

  Lois and Jenny came out of the bedroom. Jason saw that Lois wore a strained expression. Jenny said gayly, “It’s perfectly all right with Aunty Beth.”

  “Really!” the boy said. He smiled broadly. “That’s wizard.”

  “Tonight you can be backstage, if you’d like.”

  “Oh, I would like that very much, Jenny. I should go wash, if you would excuse me.”

  The boy went to his room. As soon as the door closed behind him, Lois said, “You know, Jenny, he’s going to find out it isn’t perfectly all right with Aunty Beth.”

  “What happened?” Jason asked.

  “As soon as I told her what the plans were, she sniffed and hung up on me.”

  “It has to be all right with her, doesn’t it?” Jenny said. “What can she do?”

  George sighed. “I give up. All I ask, Jenny, don’t parade the kid.”

  “I’m proud of him! I feel as if I want to wear him like a badge of honor.”

  “That isn’t what the publicity would say.”

  “All right, George. I’ll be careful. All day long, only three people recognized me, and they were very sweet.”

  George beckoned to Lois. “Come on, girl. We got chores.”

  As Lois left, she pointed out the clippings she had put on the coffee table. Jenny went over and began to look through them.

  “I better be going along,” Jason said.

  “Don’t go, Brownie. Ida has that look in her eye.”

  Ida folded her arms. “Why should I save it because he’s here? He’s thinking the same things I’m thinking. He’s wondering the same things. So is George. We’re none of us against you, Jenny B. We’re all on your side.”

  “Sure,” Jenny said. “Sure you are.”

  “I want to know one thing. How long is this going to go on?”

  Jenny studied a clipping. “How long is what going to go on?”

  “The Jenny Bowman Day Nursery.”

  Jenny put the clipping down carefully, straightened and gave Ida a long quiet look. “As long as I want.”

  Ida did not answer. Jenny looked appealingly at Jason. He merely looked at her. />
  “So I took him out for the day!” Jenny said with forced anger. “What’s so wrong about that?”

  “This is me. Ida. Remember? Eighteen years. And that fellow sitting over there is Jason Brown. Have either of us ever tried to do you any harm?”

  “I just want to get to know him a little. That’s all.”

  “And then what?” Ida asked.

  Jenny moved across the room to where hatboxes were stacked. “Oh, they brought the hats,” she said with forced animation. She took one out, turned to the mirror and tried it on.

  “Let him go home, Jenny,” Jason said.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Why don’t you quit while you’re ahead?” Ida asked.

  Jenny did not answer. She continued to stare at herself in the mirror. Jason saw her reflection. Her eyes looked vast and her mouth trembled.

  Ida went to her and put her arm around her. “Sure, you just want to get to know him. With you, Jenny, it starts the same way and it ends the same way. You wanted to see him? Great. Fine. You saw him. Now say good-by! But you don’t want that. You got to have a situation. Big feelings. And in the end, what are you going to have? Another pain in your heart. Why do you do it?”

  Jenny gently turned out of Ida’s clasp. She took off the hat and threw it aside. She looked expressionlessly at Ida. “I have to keep him with me as long as I possibly can. I have to. What else do you want to know?”

  Ida bit her lip and turned away and went into her own room.

  Jenny stood still for a moment, then fled blindly to Jason, piled herself into his lap and ground her face into his throat. “I hurt everybody,” she whispered in her misery.

  “We can get over it. We don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “I hurt already, Brownie. I hurt bad. But not when my son is with me. Then it stops.”

  In one of her abrupt changes of mood she scrambled to her feet and grinned down at him. “Why are we all getting so sour, for God’s sake? Life is a ball. We running a morgue around here? Rise and shine, Brownie. Are you good to my Lois? Be very good and sweet to her. She could be good for you. You know, Brownie, you’ve been settling into a rut. You know that, don’t you? Getting more rumply and quiet and benign all the time. Sitting around watching life. You got to get into the middle of it and swing, dear. You can’t sit it out. You and Lois can’t sit it out. I built you up big.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong, did I?”

  “No, Jenny. You couldn’t possibly do anything wrong.”

  She stamped her foot. “Dammit, when I try to be a little bit happy, everybody else goes sour on me. What’s wrong with everybody? Is this tour jinxed? Get out of here. Find Gabe and get him in here. My hair looks like a dog’s bed.”

  That night, at the performance, Jason Brown—without plan or intent—caught himself and Lois Marney off guard. He was standing in the wings with Lois, watching Jenny on stage. The boy was nearby, his face rapt. George was standing with Ida. Jenny had begun her arrangement of “What Is This Thing Called Love.” She began it with a slow, moody, quiet opening, with a pin spot on the guitarist who was the only accompaniment in the beginning. Later it would build and build as the band came in, section by section. But in the beginning it was very quiet, her voice and phrasing giving the worn lyrics a special intensity. He looked at Jenny and at the boy. He looked at Ida and George. He was aware of Lois beside him in the darkness. All of them were trapped in the spell Jenny was weaving, and the huge audience was as silent as though the theater were empty. He thought of the relationships of all of them to Jenny and to each other and he leaned toward Lois, and with a feeling of wryness, he whispered, “It’s a very good question.”

  She gasped and turned toward him, her oval face a pallor in the shadows, and he knew he had read her mood without meaning to, and had startled her. For an instant she seemed warm and vulnerable in the darkness, seeming to sway toward him, and then she turned and was gone. He stood alone, pulling down the corners of his mouth. It was still an excellent question, one that Miss Marney might give some thought to. As the sections of the band began to come in, Jenny’s voice expanded, and it took on that dark and smoky quality of the yearning and the despair she could put into that tired old song and make it new every time she did it.

  After the show a score of old friends jammed the dressing room and corridor, good friends from all the years of the songs and the shows, the wildness and the heartbreaks, the raves and disasters. Hugs and kisses, and all the in-talk and the jokes and gossip, and the little edges of jealousy and need, padded and concealed by the cosmetic habit of gayety. Here was all the warmth of a special business, a special breed, and Jenny was totally responsive to it, funny, glittering, loving, spreading herself among all of them, merging it all into party and holiday, making of it, as she so often could, the best of all possible times for everyone.

  Jason saw, beyond the tailored shoulders and the creamy bare ones, beyond the jewels and champagne glasses, the Donne boy in a corner, watchful and awed and uncomprehending, so he worked his way through the crush to Jenny and, when he had a chance, said to her that it looked as if it was shaping up into the kind of evening the boy might not enjoy.

  She frowned at him. “But I want him with me!”

  Jason indicated a couple of the more emotionally unstable personalities of the industry. “To further his education?” he asked.

  She pursed her lips. “Then we’ll both go home.”

  “The kid is hungry and sleepy, and you’ll want to rejoin the group as soon as he falls asleep.”

  She hesitated and then nodded and kissed his cheek. “Old Brownie, always taking good care.”

  She went and said good night to the boy and sent him back to the hotel with Lois. Jason wanted to go along with them, but at the time they left he could not conveniently disentangle himself from the attentions of a tiny redhead who had suddenly remembered a debt of gratitude. After she had been professionally dead for several years as a result of several nothings in a row, he had tailored a television script for her and battled the producer-director to get her cast in it, and she had done so well, so superbly well, that it had re-established her, complete with Emmy nomination and subsequent meaty roles in reasonably successful moving pictures. He knew she was well into her forties, but she was still an effective and magical twenty-eight, even at closest range—the result of a good five hours a day of working at it, plus the device of the sub-coiffure braids to pull her face firm in lieu of any telltale uplift incisions. So she pranced elfin and slightly stoned among the bigger folk, erect to enhance the pointy little breasts, agile to flaunt the perky little rump, batting the great sea-green eyes at him, telling him how truly and dearly and forever she loved and worshipped and adored darling Jason Brown, who was only just a little ol’ writer, but had gotten her into just the right spot in spite of all the other people clamoring for her at the time. By the time she was momentarily distracted, the chance to leave with Lois was gone.

  George Kogan made some skilled telephone calls, and the impromptu party moved to a private dining room in a famous restaurant, and picked up some more recruits. From there it fragmented slightly, but the nucleus moved on to the large flat of a suave, elderly, corseted British actor, and at something after two o’clock, the grateful tiny little redhead shucked her ex-husband escort and her agent-manager and went back to her borrowed apartment with Jason Brown, who, despite a certain vagueness induced by Scotch and champagne, was not at all convinced that this was one of his better ideas.

  The interlude in the apartment quite cruelly confirmed his uneasiness. Faced with the responsibility of such an intimate expression of gratitude, the tiny redhead was sobered by the fear that such intemperance might undo some of the benefits of the five dedicated hours per day. She was nervous about it, but convinced that she was affording this poor humble man one of the greatest moments of his life. She set the scene with the greatest care, adjusting the bedroom lighting, turbanning
her hair in such a way it could not possibly become mussed, swathing her little breasts in a protective night-bra, and ensconcing herself in the big canopied bed like a fragile little bonbon in a lace candy box. Her nervous instructions covered not bruising her mouth, no pummeling, no crushing, no scratching or biting or anything like that of course, and don’t take long.

  Jason embraced her with due care, and listened to her sweet dutiful little manufactured sighs, and was suddenly and quite unfortunately reminded of a game of jackstraws, where the object was to remove one straw with such guile and delicacy the rest of the stack remained undisturbed. And with that image his last chance of consummation was lost. She offered false sympathy but no assistance. Her relief at being so unexpectedly freed of the obligation was complete and transparent. She donned a sheer little hip-length nightie that matched her eyes, sat joyously on the edge of the bed and gulped a glass of brandy so large it effectively removed any chance of cooperation in the immediate future. Moments after she finished it, she gave him a wide and glassy smile and toppled back into sleep, the empty glass bouncing and rolling across the thick carpeting. He slid her into the bed, covered her over, turned out the lights and let himself out. The ex-husband was waiting on the street. From ten feet away he snarled, drew his fist back and took three running steps at Jason and swung. Jason side-stepped and the man fell over a low hedge into a narrow area of grass. Jason looked over the hedge. The man lay on his back glaring up at him.

  “That’ll teach you not to mess with her!” the man said.

  “It sure will,” Jason said, and went off in search of a taxi. When he got to bed he could not go to sleep. It was after four in the morning. His male pride felt slightly damaged but there was an ironic amusement and a feeling of relief that far outweighed the small feeling of inadequacy. He wondered if the relief was due to a recognition of the absence of guilt that unfaithfulness to Lois would have caused. Yet the guilt, in any rational anaysis, should be as great as if he had accepted the gesture of gratitude. A weakness of the flesh should not cancel out the willingness of the spirit. But the spirit had not been very willing. It was more comforting to believe that it had been a reluctance of the spirit which had caused the weakness of the flesh.